Before We Burn
by Abyssopelagic
Summary: Leonardo and his family live in wartime Japan, and they know they are on the losing side. One morning things fall apart. Human AU, historical fiction.
1. Chapter 1

_ gave me a lot of uploading issues, sorry folks! Hopefully this time we're all good._

_For the new year, I'm uploading a story I've been writing a long time, and putting on tumblr for months already. It does contain some **disturbing material **in regards to burning and fire. Please tread carefully in reading!_

_As this is historical fiction, due to the nature of the time period and event, I have been meticulous in researching for accuracy. This is why the characters are human in this case and story-though you can picture them in any way you wish! Enjoy the story._

This is the sixth week since Raph ran away.

It's still so odd, waking up without his brother's soft breathing nearby. The other morning sounds are the same, as Leonardo lies there on the bedrolls: mothers cooking breakfast, people biking to work, the occasional radio giving war news. There are more than usual after the raid got everyone up.

Leo should be getting some sleep, but he's always restless on an air raid night. Which means that lately he's been sleeping very poorly, with how often they blare out over the city these days. They've been awake for hours this time, in the neighbourhood shelter, but that won't stop sensei from getting up as usual to start breakfast.

Which he has, from the sound of his footsteps on the _tatami _mats outside their room, pulling out pans and dishes. Leo groans, stretching as he sits up and tries to wake up fully.

Beside him, Dante shifts. At six years old, the nightly raids are the hardest on him. He's still wearing his air-raid hood from last night, his eyes squeezed shut. Leo smiles fondly.

"Hey, baby brother," he says. "Time to get up. Don't want to miss breakfast."

Dante groans, rolling over into Leo's pillow. Donnie and Mikey are sitting up too, already rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. They don't need an older brother alarm clock so much, being only a few years younger than Leo himself.

"Will there be rice today?" is the first thing Mikey asks. He's old enough to remember when they had it every day, without thinking much about it. And fish, and pickled plums, and all kinds of things too expensive to get for people like them.

"It's Monday," Donnie says as he stands up. "I counted the ration last night, and we should probably only be eating it every other Sunday now. It's just not enough."

"_Ugh,_" Mikey exclaims. "I'm so sick of sweet potatoes. I bet Raph doesn't need to eat sweet potatoes every day."

"He'll be eating worse than sweet potatoes at the front. Assuming he gets to eat anything."

"Well, he's not there yet! Yoshio's brother went in January and he didn't leave training for three months."

Leo sits Dante up himself and begins to untie his nightclothes, reaching behind him to get the little uniform their desk. He lays it out carefully before bed, every night.

Dante finally stands up, which means Leo can too, and begin to get dressed for work. People will be late at the factory after the commotion of such a long raid. No rush to get out of the house today.

"You don't have to put on my clothes," Dante says, frowning and pushing Leo's hands away from his buttons. "I'm not a baby."

Leo smiles at him, but he's only half-listening, thinking about Mikey's comment. Is Raph getting rice? Is Raph getting enough to eat at all? The war has been hard on everyone, even the imperial military.

They're only slightly late for breakfast, so sensei says nothing as he lays out their meals. Leo feels a little guilty, for not getting up to help today—but their father usually lets it go when an air-raid lasted as long as this one did.

For complaining about sweet potatoes so much, Mikey devours his immediately. Donnie is frowning at something, gaze distant, until Leo pokes him in the ribs.

"What's the matter?" Leo says, popping another bite into his mouth. They tease Donnie about this a lot, his many day dreams and deep gazes inward.

"Oh, nothing," Donnie says. He sounds agitated. "I was just thinking about the U.S. We were pretty close to growing up there, weren't we? Things could have been different."

Sensei frowns, standing up to refill the teapot. "Your mother wanted her children to grow up in the home country," he says. "So you did. We didn't anticipate the war when we came back."

"Yeah." Donatello doesn't look satisfied, and to tell the truth, neither is Leo. They talk very little about America now since sensei's second marriage, and even less since the war made them a sworn enemy.

"It's war over there too, anyway," Leo says. "No air-raids, but definitely less food and lots of work to do." He knows it's much more complicated than that, and his answer is too simple for intelligent Donnie, but someone might overhear them on their way to work. They've already been reported once because sensei lived in California for so long. The _keipeitai, _the secret police, are probably already watching him at the university.

"Leo," Dante asks, frowning into his bowl of sweet potatoes. "Why didn't you go join the Army?"

Leo looks up sharply. In the kitchen he sees sensei stiffen, back straight as a rod. "Well, I'm not old enough to be conscripted yet," he says. "So I don't have to-"

"But that's where Raph is!" Dante says. He's agitated, too. "And he's one year younger! My teacher said it's an affront to the Emperor if boys don't join up now, even if they're not old enough. He said it doesn't matter as long as-"

"As long as, what, Leo goes off and dies like all those other high school boys?" Donnie asks. His eyes are hard. Beside him, Mikey has already finished his meal and is eyeing Donatello's unfinished bowl with interest. "We're not going to win, Dante. Better Leo stays here and we hope the war is over before the US lands on the beach."

Dante's mouth is in a round little _o _of surprise. "But-"

"But nothing," sensei says, leaving the kitchen. "America has Okinawa now. There's not enough food and all the big cities have been bombed. We can only hope that the Emperor sees sense before it's our city's turn, and before Raphael is finished his training."

"But _sensei-_"

"Eat your sweet potatoes," sensei says. The subject is closed.

"Sensei is way smarter than your teachers," Mikey says cheerfully, setting down his chopsticks."Don't say that at school or you'll get us all in trouble, but they only say that Emperor stuff because they're supposed to."

"Absolutely," Donnie says. His eyes are still dark. "It's all propaganda, Dante."

"Pro-pa-ganda..." Dante mouths out. "What does that mean?"

Leo is suddenly not at all hungry, but he eats the last of his food regardless. They're lucky to have it and he can't let it go to waste. Ignoring the thought of Raph boarding a battleship, he checks his watch. 8:06.

"It's after eight, Mikey," he says without looking up. "You'll be late."

"Oh!" Michelangelo jumps up, running back into their bedroom and reappearing in seconds with a backpack over his shoulder, a cap over his head. "I actually was supposed to leave early today, ha! We're making firebreaks downtown, so I should have made it for roll call!"

Sensei frowns, but Leo expected that—he hates the war, so why would he approve of wartime student labour? Mikey is only 13.

"Pay attention to the air raids," he says. "And come straight home after work, no jumping on the streetcar with your friends."

Mikey is already out the door. "See you later!" he calls over his shoulder. Leo's brothers finish their meals quietly, listening to his footsteps fade away.

Leo looks at Donnie, who is beginning to stack the breakfast bowls. "You're not working today?"

Donnie gives him a rare smile. "Not today, thank goodness," he says. "Our mobilization starts tomorrow, so we have the day off."

School is such a joke these days that Leo is grateful to hear that. Donnie deserves a real education and not the imperial recitations. Even worse is imagining his bookish brother pulling down houses, hard work far outside the classroom.

"Well, Dante and I don't," he says, standing up. "Are you ready to go, kiddo?"

Since the air raids started, Leo has been walking Dante to school. It's silly, since he might well be safer with his class in that sturdy building, and many other children walk that way, but Leo likes to keep a special eye on him all the same and know he got inside. He's never liked the thought of him walking so far alone anyway.

Dante is just standing up when sensei stops him, looking stern.

"Take your breakfast along," sensei says. "We've discussed this, my son. No wasting food, so eat it on the way. Leonardo will take the bowl home on his way to work."

It's probably impolite to eat breakfast out in the street, but this kind of concession is normal just to get a full meal into Dante. He frowns. "I'll meet you outside, Leo," he says, turning to get his backpack out of their bedroom. "I'll just be two seconds!"

Leo shares another smile with Donatello as he turns toward the yard. Mikey's cat is grooming herself in the window and sensei has started clearing the dishes, Donnie standing to take the bowls to the sink.

It's a warm morning, and it will be even hotter later today. Whenever he steps outside now he always half-expects to see Raphael, leaning against the house with a cigarette he'd begged off of soldiers. They'd all complained about the smell of smoke, but now Leonardo finds himself missing it. Maybe at the training camp Raph gets cigarettes as part of his rations, a luxury in exchange for the hard training.

Leo frowns. They haven't gotten even one letter yet, and it makes him fret about his brother being sent into battle already, though there would at least another month before he's sent into combat.

He's wondering what Raph is doing now, watching the neighbour girls disappear down the road to school, when he is blinded by a white-hot flash.


	2. Chapter 2

_Remember when I said this fic would have disturbing scenes? This is a chapter full of those. So please tread carefully! There's a lot of frightening material in here about fire as well as some body horror._

_Unfortunately, the event I'm depicting really happened, and it was very hard to write about as a result. It happened to real people and I don't want to dishonour their memory or experiences by treating it insensitively. Especially since I am writing fanfiction, it's important to be careful._

_One more thing before we start: someone reviewed last week and mentioned they thought Dante was Donnie renamed :P You've seen he's absolutely separate, and there is a reason for his being there. Enjoy the chapter._

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><p>At first Leo's fascinated by what he sees. It's bright, brighter than staring into the flash on sensei's camera, and it covers everything. It's nothing like the incendiary bombs he has seen in small raids. He doesn't have a lot of time to ponder this, as a roar fills his ears and throws him backwards.<p>

_The air raid warning passed, _he thinks, the world still screaming in his ears. Then, like a blink, nothing. Leo doesn't know how long he is unconscious.

It feels like years before he finally comes to, full of unsettling dreams, and he opens his eyes. Immediately the smoke and dust sting them, and he coughs hard, like he's been ill for weeks. Everything is dark and it takes a moment for him to realize that he's under their awning, pinned in by the maple from their yard. The leaves of the tree have been scorched away, the tips of the branches slightly alight. Leo stares in amazement.

The back of his neck stings with pain, and something is sticking against his back, but he doesn't want to move. The smoke is making it hard to breathe and he can see nothing past the scorched branches—he doesn't think he can move at all. A bomb must have fallen directly on their house. He closes his eyes.

"Leo! _Help! _It hurts!"

Dante's voice is faint, a few feet away from him. It makes him sit up right away—and almost fall again, at the pain in his pinned leg. It takes a moment for him to extricate himself from underneath the tree, and when he tries to stand he finds that what was once their house is nothing but a mess of wood and glass, something he can barely find footing in.

"I'm coming, Dante!" he screams, digging desperately through the rubble in the first spot he sees. "Donnie? Sensei? Where are you?!"

To his left, he sees something moving. To his shock it's a hand, dirty and sticky with blood. It's scrabbling at the wood pinning its owner in.

"I think he was in the bedroom doorway?" Donnie says faintly, muffled by the debris. He sounds like he's in pain and Leo's heart lurches. "Wherever that is, I mean. The house is ... there is no house, I think, if I'm under all this. Can you get me out?"

Dante is still wailing for help, but Leo can't see him at all yet. He begins to pull what used to be their house off of Donnie, struggling with one large crossbeam but finally releasing him from the chest up. Then Donatello, face twisted in pain, is able to pull himself from where he'd been stuck. Leo can see that there's glass stuck in his thigh, and a wound on his head is bleeding into his eyes. Looking dazed, Donnie wipes it away with his wrist.

"I heard sensei groan earlier," he says. "Near the kitchen, I think? We were doing the dishes and I said something about Dante wasting food, and he was laughing ... the air raid warning is _over_."

Leo says nothing, trying to pull the worst of the rubble away in an effort to find the rest of their family. It's another couple of minutes of digging, following the cries, before Dante even appears, looking terrified and dirty but, so far, unhurt. He gets their smallest brother's chest and arms free too, but when he begins to pull, Dante cries even louder.

"No!" he says, squeezing Leo's hand in warning. "It hurts!"

"There's no time to complain about whether it hurts," Leo snaps, uncharacteristically sharp.

Ignoring the protests, he drags Dante out from under their bedroom doorway and sets him next to Donatello. The briefest of once-overs reveals that he is, amazingly, almost completely unhurt beyond small bruises and cuts. More than anything he's terrified, shaking with shock and tears and grabbing at Donnie's sleeve.

As he pulls apart more of their house, Leo is becoming aware that there are more faint cries surrounding them, their neighbours trapped in the rubble as well. He can also see others digging in his peripheral, those who were lucky enough to escape. The only time he looks up is in shock, when a man staggers by horribly burned, his skin hanging in sheets on his arms. He doesn't have time to stare.

"There's fire, Leo," Donnie says suddenly, just as Leonardo finds sensei's hand, sticking out from underneath part of the roof. He squeezes it hard, trying to gate in the rush of terror that overcomes him. They can all smell the smoke—it's hard to breathe through it, or even see more than ten feet in front of him.

Leo is getting increasingly desperate, trying to pull the largest pieces off of sensei. But these ones are stuck, pinned in by yet more rubble and impossible to move. He does manage to free sensei's head, his father's lips pressed together in pain. "Leonardo," he says. "Do you know what has happened?"

"I-I don't ..." Leo says, trying to hold back tears as he pulls uselessly on a crossbeam. It's as wide as their maple tree and pinning sensei's waist, impossibly heavy. "I don't know. I think the neighbourhood was bombed."

Sensei opens his eyes, looking around at the damage. Closes them again. "I smell smoke," he says. "You're in danger if you stay here. Your brothers are out?"

"Yeah," Leo gasps. He can feel the heat at his back, the fire licking through the houses on their street. "You will be too in a minute, sensei."

Sensei looks pained. "You're all in danger if you stay. Go find somewhere safe—get word to Raphael, if you can. Find Michelangelo."

"We can't leave without you!" Donnie bursts out. He, too, is now trying to pull off the worst of the debris, but they won't be able to extricate their father without outside help. Leo knows this, and he also knows that nobody is paying attention to them or their personal tragedies. The entire street is in the midst of a personal tragedy.

Leo hears Dante make a frightened sound, and scramble over some of the rubble. "Leo, hurry! There's a _lot _of fire!"

He wants to cry and scream. "I love you, father," is all he manages. "I just need to—I'm trying—god _damn _it!"

Sensei's face twists in anger, more angry than Leonardo has ever seen it. "Get out!" he shouts, and Donnie is so surprised that he loses his footing and cries out in pain.

Leonardo has two choices: refuse to leave sensei and die together, his little brothers with them, or take the two he's freed and try to find a safe place. The answer is obvious-Raph and Mikey cannot come home and find all their bones in a tangle, no one to meet them. The thought is unbearable, just as unbearable as leaving their father to the fire.

"Can you walk?" he asks Donnie, forcing himself to stand up and turn away. Donnie nods, but on his first step he collapses again, giving a frustrated sob. Leo doesn't wait, and grabs him, Donnie yelping in surprise as Leo puts him on his back. "Hang on," he orders, grabbing a blanket sticking out from the house and tying it underneath Donatello, holding him against his waist. He's not sure where the strength has come to hold him up, Donnie is taller than he is, but he does it, and grabs Dante's wrist. Now that he's standing up, he can see that the flames have been closing in almost all sides, fed by the wood and paper of Hiroshima's homes.

He doesn't have time to think too hard about it, so they run. Right past the fire, over what used to be Mr. Murakami's restaurant and into their street. The air is thick with the smell of burning wood and blood.

This is when Leonardo begins seeing them, the sights so unbelievable that if he had heard about them he would have been sure they were exaggerated. A girl, sitting on top of a house in flames, people crying for help inside; people whose eyeballs have popped out of their heads, melted on their faces; women with glass stuck in every part of their body. Besides the cries for help in the ruins, people are quiet, trying to stay ahead of the fire. It seems as if everyone around him is horribly burned, but that kind of damage from one raid doesn't make sense to him.

He doesn't know how long they run for, or exactly how far they go, but as they move he begins to realize that it was not just their neighbourhood that has been destroyed. It seems like all of Hiroshima is on fire, with its entire population rushing away from the city centre and towards a safer place.

At some point Dante trips and can't get up again, and Leo picks him up too, holding him against his shoulder as he runs. Leo is numb; his emotions feel trapped under water, processing what he's seeing but unable to bring himself to feel anything about it.

Finally, finally, he stops. He falls to his knees in the middle of a wide street and sets Dante down beside him. Suddenly the weight of his brothers feels real and just as exhausting as it should. Leo looks around—they're a considerable distance from their old neighbourhood, and here, for now, the houses have escaped the flames. He lets Donnie drop the ground, and regrets his haste when he hears his brother cry out in pain.

He turns toward the wall of fire, that horribly burned and bleeding people still stream away from. It's difficult to remind himself that they, too, are human, just badly hurt. Somewhere in that inferno sensei has burned to death, and maybe Mikey has too. Maybe Mikey is part of this procession of scorched ghosts, and will collapse alone, unrecognizable. He turns back to his brothers.

"Leo," Dante says, pointing behind them. The dirt on his face is streaked with tears, but he's no longer crying. "That lady's chest is blue."

Leonardo has no idea why _this _is what Dante has focused on, among everything. but he looks, and for a moment he thinks Dante is right—the woman's breasts are pale blue, almost textured from a distance. But a moment later it occurs to him what he is really seeing, and winces in sympathy.

"It's glass, buddy," he says, squeezing Dante's hand. "A window broke on her, I guess. She hasn't turned blue."

"Oh," is all Dante says in response. He sits on the road next to Donatello, who is pulling glass slivers from his own thigh, wincing with each one.

Leonardo decides to take this moment and get a better look at their injuries. Dante is limping from when he tripped, and filthy, but his injuries are minimal, especially compared to the people streaming around them.

Donatello is less lucky. Leo thinks he might have broken something, from the look of his leg, and there's still blood streaming from his forehead. And his thigh, and his shoulders. He realizes Donnie is covered in it and looking very pale, so Leo reaches down to his clothes—which are torn and scorched—to tear off pieces and bind the worst of his brother's wounds. Donnie seems to exhausted to talk, but he does touch Leo's shoulder as he sits up, a silent thanks.

Leo is starting to wonder if being outside meant being burned. The people with hanging skin seem countless when he really looks, but he himself seems well enough. The worst of his injuries seem to be a deep cut on his arm, and a spot on his face where a nail stuck through. He binds the former too, but does little else for himself. There's no time for him right now.

"So now what?" he asks, mostly to himself. It occurs to him, fully, that they are homeless orphans. Mikey is missing, and they need to get word to Raphael somehow. But the immediate problems are Donnie's injuries and their proximity to the fire. Just how far does the devastation go? Leo stands up.

"We need a hospital," Dante says. "For Donnie. And all these other people need a hospital. Did the Americans do this?" he asks, frowning around at the destruction.

Leo only nods. The direction of downtown—where all the hospitals are situated—is blocked off by the wall of fire. People are only leaving that direction, so it must have been bombed too. He won't take them back in there, hospital or not.

He ends up rummaging through the nearby houses, impulsively and silently apologizing to whichever inhabitants have abandoned it. He ends up sticking an oversized air raid hood onto Dante's head, and a jacket around Donnie's shoulders. After some deliberation, he puts two more summer jackets on Dante as well, though the flames have made the wind extremely hot.

"I'm warm," Dante complains, as Leonardo helps Donnie stand, leaning heavily on his shoulder. "It's summer, Leo!"

It is entirely unreasonable to be putting his brothers in layer of stolen clothes, in the midst of a fire, and he doesn't care. Right now it feels perfectly natural, and makes him feel slightly better. He takes Dante's hand again, and on they walk.

This is considerably slower going, but he still isn't sure where his burst of strength appeared from and is unsure of whether he could do it again. He only ends up carrying Donatello again when an oily black rain falls briefly from the sky. It seeps through Leo's hair, his underwear, everything, seeming to coat his skin.

"Don't drink that!" he hears Dante call out to a burned figure—so scorched that Leo can't tell how old they are, let alone their gender. But these people must be desperately thirsty, after the heat of the fire. They move on, in the direction of one of Hiroshima's seven rivers.

Dante screams when they finally reach the bank, and Leonardo wants to. Another mess of bleeding, burning people, corpses bloated by the river water. Donnie presses his face into Leo's neck and they continue on.

"Excuse me," Leo asks a man who is only somewhat burned. "Do you know how far out the damage is? My brother needs medical attention."

The man laughs derisively. "So does everyone else," he snaps. Then he must see how Leo's face falls, so he points down the road. "Maybe the military will have the trains running soon," he says. "Try and get out to the suburbs." Leo says nothing in response. On they go.

They finally find themselves at a clearing, somewhere that must have been a park once. It is still green, unburned. Here the black rain has stopped, and the area seems to surge and shift with injured and the dead. Leo is aware again of his deep, permeating exhaustion and drops down, letting Donnie down much more carefully this time. Without a word, he lays his head on the grass and pulls Dante to the grass next to him. He can hear Donnie groaning quietly as he tries to get comfortable.

"What time is it?" Donnie asks, once he's on his good side. Leo only shakes his head, watching the fire and black smoke not far off. It's too dark to tell, and he doesn't know how long they walked for. So he doesn't think about it.

They sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

_Hey folks, thanks again for reading! Some more disturbing stuff in this chapter, so the usual warning, but the worst of it happened last chapter. Enjoy!_

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><p>Leo's dreams are strange. Their family sits together eating breakfast, and Raphael is trying to make sensei snap, arguing about the morality of the war as their mother spoons rice and fish into Dante's bowl. Mikey is confused: "Mama, you're in the urn! Stop making breakfast!" and Leo wants to ask what's going on, why isn't sensei's second wife here instead? Sensei seems unaware of this confusion, still patiently trying to talk Raph down and Donnie rolls his eyes, closing their bedroom door.<p>

"Your parents are in the fire, burning," Leo's mother says cheerfully to Dante. "Eat your breakfast."

Raphael points in their mother's direction. "You're one to talk about honour, when you couldn't even honour Mom's memory!" Dante begins to cry, reaching out for Leo.

Then a white-hot flash, and then nothing, nothing at all. Smoke chokes his lungs.

He sits up immediately, gasping and hands scrabbling at the ground. It takes Leo a moment to remember where he is, what's been happening to them. He looks around, suddenly panicked that his remaining family has disappeared.

Donatello is still asleep, but so very pale; his head wound stopped bleeding in the night. Dante is sitting on a concrete slab next to them, holding a rice ball in one hand.

"Where did you get that?" Leo asks. He feels sore, and his head aches like it's been stuffed with cotton balls.

Dante's little face lights up. "You're awake!" He points ahead of them, to several makeshift tents. Soldiers move in and out of them, carrying injured people or supplies. Leo looks for Raphael and doesn't see him. "They're giving them out. I snuck some for you and Donnie, too. They thought you were dead but I told them you weren't."

Leo's chest hurts—the memories are rushing back, and he can see the bodies strewn all over even now. Smoke rises from Hiroshima, but the firestorm seems to have died down somewhat. He wonders how many other people, like sensei, died in there, and how many more will die later. He tries not to think too hard about Michelangelo.

"Excuse me," he says to a passing soldier. "What time is it? Was the bomb yesterday?"

"It's 1:30 PM, on August 8th," he says, and then rushes off again, like he never stopped. His jaw drops.

"We've been asleep two days?" he exclaims, loud enough to make a nearby woman look up and Donnie groan, stirring.

"Five more minutes, sensei," he mumbles, covering his eyes, and that's enough to make Leo's chest seize up over again. Dante pauses too, looking down at his rice ball. Leo notices that he's shucked off his three jackets, but that the air raid hood is still tied snugly. Frowning, he reaches into his pocket—then pauses, staring in wonder at his hand.

"Leo, I'm still holding my chopsticks," he says, like it's the most amazing thing he's ever seen.

Leo actually smiles—Dante's confusion is so real and sweet, familiar compared to what surrounds them. "You've held your chopsticks all this time? Well, I think you can leave them."

"I can't," Dante says, and his face immediately crumples. "I can't open my fingers."

Leo's smile is gone again in a blink and he takes Dante's hand, prying open his fingers one at a time. He had, in his panic two days ago, put _three _jackets on Dante—how had he missed that Dante had had his fist curled around these?

Sniffling, Dante reaches into his pocket and brings out two more rice balls, handing them to Leonardo before taking another halfhearted bite of his own. Leo suddenly realizes how ravenous he is and downs his in two bites, before turned back to Donnie. Their brother is sitting up now, looking around and looking despondent.

"Oh my god," he says in a low voice. "Leo, just look at this."

Leo knows what he means, just from looking around at the charred devastation. Bodies everywhere, some piled by soldiers but others still strewn between the injured. They have slept through the beginnings of the relief efforts, it seems, and Leo is relieved in a strange way. At least the fires are out.

"Eat," he says, handing Donnie a rice ball. "Baby brother got these for us before we even woke up."

Donnie takes it but only sets it in his lap, staring down at it like he's too exhausted to bring it to his mouth. It takes a few more minutes of cajoling to get Donnie to start eating at all. Leo is worried about him, how sticky with blood he is and how pale. The thought of losing who he has salvaged makes him feel nauseous.

"I'm going to see what I learn from those soldiers, okay?" Leo says, standing up. "Dante, do not budge. Make sure Donatello rests while I'm gone."

Dante, eager to have a responsibility, is immediately pushing at Donnie's shoulder to lie him back down on the grass. Donnie closes his eyes and obeys, rice ball still unfinished. He's so exhausted. Normally Donatello would be right next to him, eager to learn everything about what is obviously a new bombing technique and new kind of warfare. He would probably even be trying to treat people from what he's gleaned from books.

The smell of burned flesh is somehow even stronger near the tent, and Leo can see that the soldiers have put injured here, those who are unrecognizable and cannot move themselves. Trying not to gag, he approaches the soldier he guesses is the highest ranking. The man doesn't look up when Leo greets him, scribbling something onto a dirty clipboard.

"Sir, I need to know if any relief efforts have been set up yet, whether there's any hospitals open so I can take my brothers-"

The soldier looks up, frowning. "The whole city is gone," he says, and Leo can see the bags under his eyes. "The Americans dropped this new type of bomb. We're doing the best we can, but if your brother is one of those students with full body burns then just make him comfortable, we can't-"

"He's not," Leo says immediately, but his stomach drops. His fear that Mikey is among these people is very real, it seems. "He's got some bad cuts and maybe a break, but I think he'll live! Someone just needs to help him!"

Leo must sound truly desperate, because the soldier looks up, handing Leo a piece of paper as he does. "Disaster certificate," he says before Leo can ask. "We've been writing them all day-it'll get you rations and free on trains. We don't have much for your brother, but men are going around to the ones who aren't beyond hope." Leo meets his eyes and sees that the soldier is not hopelessly cold, just exhausted, exhausted as Leo. He does feel sorry.

Leonardo bows in his thanks, then stuffs the certificate into his pocket. The soldier turns away to speak to someone else, and a moment later Leo is pointing out his brothers to them, so another man can approach with bandages and iodine. It seems to be all they all they have, but it's much better than nothing. His knees are weak with relief.

It strikes him, as he walks back from the tent, how quiet all these injured people are. Nobody cries out except for water, and the only talk is among the soldiers or the least wounded. The loudest noise is a baby crying nearby, a sound Leo recognizes as hungry fussing from Dante's babyhood. He shudders at the thought of trying to feed an infant in this wasteland.

When he returns to his brothers, Donnie has iodine and clean bandages on his wounds, the soldier already hustling off to the next patient. He's wincing from the sting, but is finally finishing his rice ball.

"This is better than nothing," he says to Leo, sounding much more like himself. "I mean, infection might have already set in after this long, but none of it was inflamed from what I can see. I'm amazed we found a place that had this much at all."

Donnie does look flushed, but that might just be the heat. At least he's been properly bandaged.

"I need to go look for Mikey," Leo says, absently pulling Dante's comforting weight against him. "Now that the fires are out, maybe I can find someone from his class and see if he made it at all."

Don closes his eyes. "The soldier told us all the burns happened to people outdoors," he said. "I guess this new kind of bomb caused extremely high temperatures along with the flash ... let's just hope he was shielded or something like us."

"Yeah," Leo says, but he knows Mikey had been running along the road, out in the warm sun. "The man at the tent said junior school students keep coming in beyond hope. I have to find him."

Dante squeezes Leo's fingers with his own, shifting a little bit in Leo's grip. "Mikey will be okay," he says. "You found Donnie and me, so you can find him too. Can I come?"

"No," Leo says, immediately. He sees no reason to expose his brothers to more horror than they have already needed to see; this place is full of corpses too, but it seems relatively safe compared to the rest of Hiroshima. "Listen, Dante," he says, gently pushing up Dante's chin so Leo can look into his eyes. "I'm counting on you, okay? Donnie still needs to rest and stay here, and I'm going to need you to stick close to him. Don't go out of sight and make him worry, okay?"

"Will you be back with Mikey tonight?" he asks. Leo smiles faintly, reaches out, ruffles his hair. Dante is endlessly trusting of Leo, in Leo's ability to keep them safe. It makes his heart ache.

"I'll do my best," he says, not meeting Donnie's eyes. "I have a whole city to look through. Maybe while you're here you can look at the soldiers coming by and see if Raph is with any of the units?"

His little brother lights up right away. "Okay!" he says, shuffling away from Leo immediately to stand and scan the passersby.

Leo squeezes Donnie's hand. "Rest up," he says. Donnie closes his eyes.

"Maybe I should have gone to work after all," Donnie says. "I mean, then Mikey and I could look out for each other, wherever he is..."

_Or maybe you'd both be dead. _"I'm grateful the three of us made it here," is all he says. "I'll see you later."

Dante is already pointing out soldiers to Donnie, wondering aloud if they know Raph, when Leo turns to go. He doesn't know where to begin—the house? Or, what's left of their house. As Leo walks he desperately wants to avoid whatever he will encounter there, because it certainly involves bleached bones, scattered with the ashes of his father's two wives. Leo has lived in that house for as long as he can remember.

So despite his own better judgement, he skirts their neighbourhood, climbing over rubble and on whatever roads have been cleared towards downtown.

The city is a wasteland.

The further in he goes, the worse it gets, and Leo can only spy the department store and the domed city hall rising up over the blast. Residents are milling about, digging through their homes or calling out names. He stops at elementary schools turned relief stations, reads through the messages people have left on the blackboards until he wants to weep. Everyone is looking for their loved ones. He is not special.

A few times familiar people stop him, asking if he knows the whereabouts of a classmate, a neighbour. Leo can only shake his head. He asks them about Michelangelo in turn, and the result is always the same.

It's only after hours of fruitless searching, when the shadows are finally getting long, that he circles back to his old neighbourhood.

A few people are digging through their homes, but when Leonardo sees his own he feels nauseous, weak. He aches with the shame of leaving sensei's bones there for one day longer. What was he hoping to see? A sign from Michelangelo, saying where he is? There have been literal signs sticking up from some of the rubble, saying that family members are alive and have left the city, or are at whatever relief station. Resigned, he turns to go.

He stops in one more school before the trek back, stepping gingerly over the laid-out injured and apologizing when his footing is wrong. He doesn't bother to ask the volunteers—he knows by now that they are desensitized to his plight. Instead he scans the faces of living and dead, occasionally bending down to look at a nametag or a keepsake if they prove unrecognizable.

"Hamato-san."

The voice is weak, a bit of a distance in the schoolroom, but it's addressing Leo's uncommon last name. He looks up, and a burn victim is waving him over, her face swollen on one side.

"Do you recognize me, Hamato-san?" she says, and after a moment Leo realizes he does—one of Mikey's many friends, always in and out of their home. She had been very pretty, and giggly, a favourite of his brother.

"Kataoka-san, have you seen Michelangelo?" he asks immediately, not expecting an answer and shocked when she nods, wincing with the effort.

"On the way to our work site," she says, and Leo's heart leaps. "I had to get my sister ready for school after the air raid so I was late, and I met him as we were turning onto the main street. That's the only reason I'm still here, I think, because I didn't get downtown."

If she didn't get down there, there's no way Mikey did in the time he spent walking. "What about after the flash?"

She closes her one good eye. "I didn't see him," she says. "But there was only one way out of the fire on that street corner, and soldiers showed up along the riverbank asking if people wanted care at Ninoshima. I didn't think my mother would find me there, but it's a small island. It wouldn't hurt any worse to check."

She was wrong—it would hurt, because if he was still not there, or dead, then Leo will have made this journey for nothing, and will have failed utterly as an older brother. And if he gets back, now even later than he promised, and something has happened to the brothers who _were _with him ...

He reaches out and squeezes the girl's hand. "Thank you," he says, genuinely. "I'll try Ninoshima. Good luck finding your mother, Hideko-san." He remembers her first name just then, knowing that Mikey would want him to be friendly, a little informal. It seems to comfort her.

"If you see my mother, tell her where I am!" she says, with a tinge of desperation. "I'm so lonely here."

Leonardo has never met her mother in his life, but he nods, squeezing her hand once more before turning to go, a new force of will in his blood.


	4. Chapter 4

_I'm really enjoying putting this up on a new site! It's fun showing it to a whole new group of people. Thank you SO much for all the feedback, please keep it up!_

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><p>Even at dusk, Ujina is crowded, and Leo has to jostle for a space even near the gunships leaving for the island. Leo has never been there himself—it has always been a smudge in the distance, a small outpost with only a few thousand people. He's grateful when he can find an opening and step into the boat, alongside a couple hundred wounded people, because he is starting to feel very green. He isn't sure if it's the smell of death and cremations, the stress, or a combination of it all. He hopes Donatello and Dante feel better than he does.<p>

"Everybody out!" the soldier shouts some time later, and Leo is the first on the dock despite his nausea. He sets out for what seems to be the relief area, and is shocked immediately at the sheer volume of people here, shifting and groaning on this tiny island. It's been unaffected by the blast, and the green trees and grass are less of a comfort than they should be.

He walks through the neat rows, constantly needing to step around or away from hands tugging at his pant leg, voices groaning at him for water. Leo is single-minded, scanning their faces for Mikey's and forgetting them as soon as he knows it's not him.

Leo will be here all night if he has to, looking at thousands of bodies just to be sure Michelangelo is not among them. When he gets back to the city, he'll make a sign like he should have to begin with, and collect their father's bones. He'll be a good son and brother, and try not to think about what they'll say to him when he returns without Mikey.

Look at all these faces, after all. There are thousands in Hiroshima and beyond all in need of their families, but everything is a mess of blood and fire and panic. There is no way he'll find Mikey.

He is thinking this, looking up from checking a bloated corpse's student nametag, when he sees Michelangelo at the end of the row.

Leo doesn't know how he got there so quickly, but he yells something that's either Mikey's name or just a relieved scream and is at his side, running his hand over Mikey's cheek, through his curls, taking one of his hands.

He wants to cry when Mikey's eyes crack open, his face registering what he's seeing, before it lights up with joy. "Leo!" he says. "I knew you would find me! I _knew _it!"

He really does cry then, sitting Mikey up to gently wrap his arms around him and press his face into the crook of his shoulder.

"I was sure you were dead," he says, voice cracking. It feels like a dam has broken inside him, full of pain and relief that he had had to plug up when they were running from the inferno.

"Look at us, though, now we've been out to Ninoshima!" Mikey says when Leo pulls away. His eyes are bright with tears now, too, but he's smiling, golden as always.

Leo actually laughs at that, wiping his eyes. Mikey sounds like he's been on an exciting adventure, instead of bombed two days ago.

He takes a moment to look at Mikey's injuries, and his stomach seizes. One arm and part of his torso are badly burned, his clothes in shreds like his skin. His back is covered in cuts, and he's holding the burned arm at an angle that suggests a break. But compared to many of the people Leo has seen, he tells himself, this is nothing. Mikey will survive this.

Mikey sees him looking and his face falls. "It's bad, huh," he says, and Leo shakes his head.

"There's been a lot worse." He crouches beside Mikey, thinking about the charred black faces and melted eyes he saw when he was running with their brothers. "How did you get all the way out here?"

Michelangelo frowns, and shakes his head. "Not yet," he says. "I ... want to talk to sensei about it first. Before I think too hard about everything."

Leo breathes deeply, squeezing Mikey's good hand in both of his. He hasn't had to say it yet, because Donnie and Dante saw it too, and now the words feel rough, sandpapered coming up.

"Sensei is dead. I'm sorry, Mikey," he says, and his little brother's face crumples. He cries, deep and anguished_, _and Leonardo feels like the worst person on Earth to have brought that pain on Mikey, after the things he must have seen.

He swallows back tears of his own, waiting for Michelangelo to cry it out and massaging his hand until he begins to calm. Mikey lets go of Leo's hand, wiping his eyes with his wrist.

"Donnie and Dante?" Mikey whispers, as if afraid of the answer. Leo did come alone, after all.

"Fine," Leo says. "Donnie got a bit cut, but they're fine. I just left them today to come and get you, but we're going right back."

Mikey nods, swallowing hard. "We need to get something to Raph," he says. "About what happened."

"I'm going to go back to the house tomorrow and leave him a message," Leo says. He doesn't mention sensei's bones. "Do you want to get going?"

Mikey looks towards the dock, then shakes his head. "I was here last night too, and it's too dark for the boats to run. We'll have to go in the morning."

Leo glances up, and realizes that he was so focused on Mikey that it had gotten dusky without his notice. His head aches with the thought of Mikey here since that first day, alone and wondering when someone would come for him. If someone would come at all. Leo shifts, gets comfortable sitting beside him.

"First thing in the morning we'll go back, and we can get word out to Raphael," Leo says, trying to sound cheerful. "And then we'll be together again."

Mikey looks away. "We won't," he says. Leo remembers why, and swears internally. Nothing will be right again.

"Let's concentrate on finding Raph," he says. "And get some rest so we can get on the first boat back. It's going to be alright now, Mikey."

Mikey nods, but he looks close to crying again. Leo distracts them both by ripping what's left of his shirt into a sling for Mikey's arm—something that makes Mikey cry out in pain from the burns, but Leo tells him sharply must be done. At least, he thinks so. It's better than leaving it hanging on that angle. He wishes he had something for his brother's burns.

He makes Mikey as comfortable as he can, then waits for him to sleep, watching the cremation fires burn on the Hiroshima skyline.


	5. Chapter 5

_New chapter! Nice long one. Sorry, been super busy with schoolwork to post._

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><p>The next morning they do get on one of the earliest boats, full of more soldiers and supplies than people. Leo found last night that most have come to Ninoshima to die, rather than to recuperate. Mikey sleeps on his shoulder the whole way back, and Leo feels bad waking him at Ujina, groggily helping him back onto the pier.<p>

"Did you sleep well?" Mikey asks when they're walking away, and Leo laughs, ruffling his brother's hair.

"Not at all," he says. He dozed once or twice, but he feared that if he stopped paying attention, Mikey would slip away, like so many others around them. His brothers couldn't afford Leonardo wasting time on things like sleep, anyway.

It takes much longer this time, with Leo keeping a slow pace and with Mikey's arm slung around his shoulders. Michelangelo is staring around the whole time, amazed at how much damage the fire caused.

"And they're saying this was just one bomb?" Mikey says, eyes wide. Today the main roads are marginally easier to navigate, and Leo can see fewer bodies now that crews have started to come through.

After his wandering yesterday, he gets lost a couple of times, the streets so unfamiliar now. When they do find the relief area again, it's almost noon. Leo realizes Donnie and Dante are not where he left them, and his heart lurches.

He panics, squeezing Mikey's hand hard. "Donnie?! Dante!" he calls, scrambling to help Mikey sit down on a clear spot of the grass. There are fewer people here now, he realizes with horror, but the cremation fire near the road is much bigger.

To his eternal relief, Dante appears from behind an old concrete wall. As soon as he sees who's been calling him, his face lights up and he bolts, right for them.

"_Mikey_! Leo, you were gone _all night_!" he wails, throwing his arms around both of them. "Donnie's so mad at you, he thought something bad happened!"

Leo resists saying that of course he did, the past days have been nothing but a string of terrible things. Mikey is wincing at the force of Dante's hug, but he forces a smile anyway, his burned hand hovering over Dante's head like he wants to ruffle his hair.

"Where is Donnie?" Leo asks, still scanning the park. His youngest brother's reaction would have been considerably different if he had come back to a dead brother, but he's still relieved when Dante points to a grove of trees and bamboo, a little scorched but mostly still green.

"We moved over there because he feels sick," Dante says.

Leo frowns in worry. "How sick?" he asks, as they turn toward the grove. Now he can see several children Dante's age behind that wall, peering after them. One is holding a dirty cloth ball in her hands, and for a moment Leo lets himself be amazed at their resilience, to be willing to play at a time like this.

When they turn the corner, Donnie is lying on his side, head pillowed on a jacket folded under his head. He's pale and can barely lift himself up when he sees Michelangelo, reaching out one hand for him. His eyes grow wide when he sees the extent of Mikey's injuries.

"Where _were _you?" he asks, as Leo grabs another of Dante's coats to try and make Mikey comfortable. Leo gives his hand a firm squeeze. It's clammy and hot. "Dante cried all night for you."

"I did _not_," Dante says, and Mikey snickers.

"I did get Mikey, didn't I?" Leo says, forcing a smile as he checks his brother's forehead. Leo himself still feels sick himself, but there's no way he looks this bad, when he can do so much walking. "I had to go to Ninoshima to find him, and I spent the night. I'm sorry."

Donnie closes his eyes, but Dante looks amazed. "Ninoshima?" he says. "That's far! Mikey, how did you get to Ninoshima?"

Mikey shakes his head, covering his eyes with his good hand. "A soldier pulled me out of the river and put me on a boat," he says. "I'll tell you another time, okay? I'm really tired."

Dante frowns, trying to adjust Mikey's jacket-pillow more comfortably underneath him. It's unusual for Michelangelo to not be talkative, and Dante knows it. Leo understands—Mikey has seen a lot of horror these few days, with no one to bring him comfort.

He checks Donnie more carefully after that, wishing desperately for sensei to be here doing this instead. Donnie's wounds aren't inflamed, and on closer inspection what Leo thought was a broken ankle is more likely just sprained and swollen. But he's still so pale, and shivering with fever. He feels a rush of confused fear when he finds tiny purple spots, along Donnie's neck and arms like he's been pricked with pins.

"What is it?" Donnie asks, seeing Leo's expression change. "Is there infection?"

Leo shakes his head, trying to force another smile. "No, it's nothing," he says. "You're probably sick from all this awful stuff in the air on top of your wounds. Just get some more rest."

Donatello sighs. "All I've been doing is resting," he says. "I want to find out more about this new bomb. It's amazing we all got out with what we did, from what I've been able to see from here." He shifts onto his back, wincing at the pain.

Leo is so tempted to lie down next to them, and tell Dante to wake him up if anything happens, but there is still one more thing he has to. He should have done it yesterday on his search for Michelangelo, but hadn't been able to bring himself to get close enough.

He steels his nerves. He can rest when this is done.

"I have to go again," he says. "I need to see what's left of the house. And get sensei's bones." He hears Donnie suck in a sharp breath, and his heart aches. "I need to leave Raph a message, too," he adds. "Maybe they'll let him come find us."

"I doubt it," Donnie says immediately, not looking at him. Leo doesn't answer.

"No!" Dante says suddenly. He's kneeling, looking at Leo with wide, bright eyes. His lower lip trembles. "I don't want you to go again!"

"This is the last time," Leo says, reaching out to pull him close. Dante pushes him away. "This is very important, Dante, and I need to-"

"Stop it! I know it's important, I'm not a baby!" he shouts. Leo can see his shoulders shaking, tears pouring down his brother's face already. "I just ..."

Mikey reaches out a hand. "What is it?" he asks, more gently than Leo could have ever managed. Dante wipes his eyes furiously.

"I just hoped sensei got out," he chokes out. "I thought, maybe ... since he's really strong ..." He can't speak after that, his little body heaving with sobs. It makes Leonardo want to cry too—Dante, so far, had treated their situation like an adventure once they were free of the fire, confident in his brothers' abilities to make things better.

So Leo doesn't leave yet, sitting between his injured brothers and holding Dante on his lap until he starts to calm. He says soothing words and runs a hand through Mikey's hair when he, too, begins to tear up. Donnie is silent, eyes still squeezed shut like it can block out the whole world.

Leo desperately wants sensei to prove Dante right and appear, to rest his hands on Leo's shoulders and tell him not to worry any more. This isn't fair.

His nerves must be hard as granite now, with how much he's pushed down his own feelings for what needs to be done. But he can't put this off and let sensei's spirit wander. He lifts Dante's chin, wipes his brother's tears off it with his hand.

"We're all going to miss sensei a lot," he says, keeping his voice decently steady. "A horrible thing happened to the city, but he's still watching out for us, right? That's why we kept shrines for our mothers at home, so they could be close. That's just what we have to do for sensei."

Mikey makes a small, anguished sound. Leo keeps his gaze on Dante because he'll break down if he looks. Dante nods slowly, wiping his eyes again.

"...I still don't want you to go again," Dante says, holding Leo's wrists. "And I want to see what happened to our house."

Leonardo is about to deny him again, preparing for the waterworks, when Donnie lifts his head, shifting over to look at Leo.

"Take him with you," Donnie says. "It's not like Mikey and I can watch him like this, and you can't exactly protect him from what's out there at this point."

Leo looks around, at the people who are still squatting in this area just like them. The cremation fire is still burning away, and he can see even more in the distance. Donnie is absolutely right.

He relents, letting Dante off his lap and pulling them both to their feet. Donnie is already dozing off by the time they set out, but Mikey is complaining that his burns are beginning to itch, too irritating to sleep.

Satisfied that their brothers won't be disturbed, Leo goes, holding tightly to Dante's hand. He doesn't realize he's essentially been pulling his brother along with his long, adult strides until Dante almost falls over trying to keep up. He slows, though he is desperate to get this over with and really see their house.

Dante says very little on their walk, just looking around and holding tight to Leonardo's hand. Before the bomb, on their walks to school, Dante would chatter on and on about his friends and his classwork. Leo would say little in response and he rarely had to—Dante filled the gap between them seamlessly.

The space between them is filled now by tangible silence. Leo kept Dante's small hand in his as they walked, approaching what used to be their street.

This is where he had stopped the first time, when he had seen the ruins and been unable to approach their house. He can see it now, the debris charred and black. What's left of the houses spills into the street, all charcoal thanks to the fire.

"Everything's gone," Dante whispers, squeezing Leo's fingers. The house Dante was born in, that Leo himself lived in as long as he can remember. Murakami-san's restaurant next door, where he and his brothers would go and get free bowls of noodles. Their neighbours are probably dead, though a few people are digging through the rubble as they turn the corner.

Leo looks at the spot where their house was. Breathes deeply through his nose.

"Watch out for glass," is all Leo says as they step through the rubble. Very little has survived—he reaches out to touch a blackened crossbeam and it crumbles under his fingertips. Here and there he can see the remnants of stone shrines, a house's gate. Out of the corner of his eye he sees heart-wrenching, tiny bones under a fence. He steels himself and they cross the threshold of their home.

Dante's eyes are narrowed, as if he's trying to pick out what it used to look like before the bomb, what its layout had been. Leo lets go of his hand so he can begin to pull their house apart, seeking out the spot he knows he abandoned sensei in.

"Don't touch _anything,_" he snaps as Dante begins to do the same. "You might hurt yourself."

He isn't surprised to hear Dante turn around and start pulling up beams anyway, but he can't tell him off because suddenly his throat has closed up. Here is sensei.

The bones are where he left them, lying beneath the same crossbeam. Leo feels like he's floating, watching this from overhead as he reaches out for the skull. What's left of his father's hand is near his face, as if it had been covering his eyes. A shudder ripples through him when he picks the skull up, imagining the heat, the smoke ... sensei had always taken pain quietly, but that does nothing to comfort Leo. Gently, he sets his father's skull back down.

He almost jumps out of his skin when he feels a hand on his shoulder, and realizes Dante has come up behind him. Swiftly Leo wipes his eyes, turning to look at his brother. His eyes are bright, staring hard at the scene.

"I wish I stayed with Donnie and Mikey," Dante says. "It's different, when it's _sensei's _bones. Not just other people's."

Leo squeezes Dante's hand, and reaches out to untie Dante's air-raid hood. He had kept it on since that first day, oversized and warm as it was.

"Let's take sensei home," he says, turning back to the bones.

"We don't have a home, Leo," Dante says in surprise. "We don't have a city, even."

Leo doesn't have time to feel the pang from that, numbing his mind and body so he can pick up his father's remains and place them inside the hood. He hadn't realized that sensei's bones would be so small, after what a tall, broad man he had been. Leo tries to picture his face, his hands, as he had been before this.

Where will he even put them? Is there a shrine he can put together from scraps in their city? Their relatives are in America or dead long ago. Leo ties the air-raid hood shut, as tightly as he can. He isn't sure how he'll go on if he drops his father's bones.

He leaves the bundle where it is for now, standing up straight. "You can help me dig now if you want," he says to Dante. "I'm just going to see if anything is left." Suddenly a cut or scrape doesn't seem like such a worry. But his brother shakes his head, sitting down gingerly on what's left of their roof.

Leo doesn't press him. He spends a long time trying to clear space, and often failing, but he can pick out where their kitchen used to be, their old bedroom, sensei's room. So many things in those rooms that had been a part of their lives, barely considered.

Very little is left. A chipped bowl from their breakfast, and Leo knows it's Dante's from the charred food left inside; part of the urn that had held Leo's mother, which he places reverently next to the air-raid hood. He looks for the urn belonging to Dante's mother too, but finds nothing. He feels guilty, though Dante tells him it's not his fault.

"You and sensei told me all about her," Dante says, cutting off Leo's apology. He's still looking at the air-raid hood of bones. "I'll pray to your mother's urn for her too."

He's given up on finding anything else when his fingers find a metal box, in what used to be their father's room. He's immediately curious: sensei's room has always been off-limits for his privacy, but Leo has memories of peeking into the doorway with Raphael and seeing this box, on a shelf next to his bedroll.

It's locked, of course, and Leo isn't about to pry it open right here. He's ashamed to realize that he's hoping it's just stuffed with money, a last gift from his dead father to keep them afloat.

It's getting late, so he decides looking any longer won't bring up more than memories. Dante's eyelids are drooping so he lets him climb on his back, holding tightly to his rice bowl and the remainder of the urn. Leo holds the bundle of bones and the box close to his chest. Literally all that is left of his father, in his arms.

By the time they're turning the corner towards the relief area, Dante's chin is resting against Leo's shoulders and Leo's feet drag against the ground. He has another, momentary panic until he spots his brothers where he left them, half-hidden by bamboo. Carefully, he sets Dante down.

They seem left alone back here, though a few other people are milling around in the bamboo as well for shelter. Both of them are sleeping and Leo is grateful—he didn't want to see their faces when he returned with an armful of bones.

He sits cross-legged at his brothers' feet, and Dante collapses next to him, leaning heavily against his side. Leo doesn't bother to wait for dark, or even lie down.

He puts one arm around his smallest brother, and the other curls protectively around his father's remains. He sleeps cross-legged and sitting up.


	6. Chapter 6

_Sorry this was a little delayed! I always forget to post here, haha. Things might be looking up for the kids this chapter. A special guest star well loved in TMNT is here too. Thanks for reading._

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><p>"Leonardo."<p>

Leo's eyes snap open and he almost leaps to his feet, crying out in surprise. He doesn't recognize that voice, and the figure in front of him scrambles backwards.

As he shifts, sensei's bones rattle together and Leo gives a horrified cry at the sound, holding the hood closer to his front. He sees Dante sitting up out of the corner of his eye—he must have moved to lie down after Leo fell asleep—and hears Donnie groan faintly, stirring behind them.

The figure's hands are out in front of him, protectively. "Leonardo! It's alright! It hasn't been _that _long since we've seen each other!"

Leo really looks then, and realizes who he almost kicked in the stomach. A tall, wide-eyed man, boyish despite his height and his age.

"Usagi?" he asks, disbelieving. The son of sensei's old friend, a frequent visitor before the war got bad. There is no way Usagi walked all this way for them, or would have _remembered _them in this chaos. Leo's family hasn't seen him since his father died last year.

Dante jumps up beside him, mouth wide open. "What are you doing here?" he exclaims. "You live in Kure! Did it get bombed too?"

Usagi shakes his head, but in seconds his eyes are taking in everything—Leo's wounded brothers wincing awake, their ragged clothes ... the bundle in Leo's lap, where part of sensei's skull is visible. His expression drops as he shares a pained look with Leonardo, before collecting himself and standing up.

Leo sets the bones aside carefully to join him, wincing at the cramp from sleeping sitting up. He tries to ignore how Mikey, barely awake, bites his trembling lip when he sees them, poking through where the hood doesn't cover.

Usagi is blinking suspiciously hard, but his voice is clear when he speaks. "I was giving up hope on finding you. When I saw your street ..."

"Finding us?" Donnie says, on the ground. He's sitting up, rubbing away tears with one hand and looking pointedly away from the bones. "You didn't seriously come from Kure to look for _us, _did you?"

Kure is to the east, a day trip from their childhoods that Leo thinks of when he's at his hungriest or unhappiest. Usagi would show Leo the family's samurai swords, passed down for generations, and even let Leonardo hold the _wakizashi_. The memory feels buried under rubble, impossible to pull out.

"I've been looking for my wife's brother," Usagi says, clearly taking in Mikey and Donnie's injuries. Next to tidy Usagi, come straight from the real world, they look even more worrying.

Leo can't help but feel a disappointed ache, though he isn't surprised. Leo has thought of no one else but his own family since that morning. He can't expect even their friends to make him and his brothers their first choice.

Usagi must notice Leo's expression because his eyes soften, and he claps a hand onto Leo's shoulder. "Don't think I'd forgotten you, Leonardo. You know the importance of family—and I know my brother-in-law's fate after meeting some of his coworkers," he adds, more softly.

"I'm sorry," says Leo, and means it. He remembers Usagi's brother-in-law too, a severe man who was living with them to reach his job in Hiroshima. He had disliked sensei, but Leo still feels a pang of sadness knowing this bomb has killed someone else he knew. Countless people, if he really thinks about it: neighbours, classmates, coworkers. He's been trying not to think about it.

"I'm sorry too," Usagi says. He glances toward the air-raid hood, apparently unable to look away, and Leo realizes that he might think _two _people are in that tangle of bones.

"My father is dead," he says in a soft, steady voice. "Raphael joined the army, so I'm hoping he can come back to us soon."

There's great sadness in Usagi's face, but relief too—they've always been close, Leo and his brothers. Sensei's loss is still a gaping wound, but thinking of the five of them together again ... it feels survivable.

"I need to leave him a message in our neighbourhood," Leo adds. "So he knows where we are." He needs to think about housing, or something like it ... he's sure he can pull some metal scraps together to make a shack, and when Raph finds them they can finally leave this place and find work to look after their brothers.

Usagi is quiet, stepping back to look them up and down. Leo is glad to see him here, but he's embarrassed, knowing that they look no different than the rest of these Hiroshima ghosts. He's about to say he had better get going, to leave the message, when Usagi speaks.

"Why don't you come home with me?" he asks, like it's just a day out to visit. "It's just my wife, my son and I in that big house. Leave a note saying you're safe in Kure with us and I'm sure it will ease his worries."

Leo stares—then shakes his head, disbelieving. "I couldn't ... we couldn't impose on you like this. It's too much, Usagi-san, I-"

Usagi shakes his head, and suddenly he looks very stern. Remarkably like sensei, actually. "I insist. You're lucky you all survived and your father would want you to stay that way. He would do the same for my son."

Leo is about to protest, but he looks at his brothers again, really seeing them. Donnie's exhaustion, Mikey's burns, Dante's small dirty face. Donnie is doing a good job of smoothing his expression, but Mikey and Dante are clearly feeling otherwise, looking slack-jawed at Usagi. Dante tugs Leo's arm.

"I heard a soldier say nothing will grow here for 75 years," he says, eyes round and serious. "The bomb ruined the earth. How are we gonna eat if we stay here?"

"Oh! Hold on," Usagi says, reaching into his shoulder bag at Dante's question. Leo is grateful for the distraction, because he had no answer for his brother.

Usagi pulls out three rice balls and a skein of water. "These were lunch, but I can eat when we get home. Please, boys. It would be my pleasure to have you as my guests."

Leo takes the food and finally relents, nodding his head. He doesn't eat, but makes sure his brothers finish every bite before they all take long drinks of water. Usagi disappears briefly, finally returning with a military handcart he must have begged off of the soldiers. Donatello still can't walk and they help him into it, Usagi pushing it along. With Mikey's arm slung over Leo's shoulder and Dante close beside them, they leave the relief area for good. Sensei's bones sit in Donnie's lap, clinking with every bump in the road.

When they get close to their old neighbourhood, Leo sits his brothers at the end of the street, pulling at debris in an effort to find something he can write on. He finally finds a metal sheet and grabs a burnt stick sticking out of a house. His _kanji _are messy, but readable enough:

_RAPHAEL:_

_YOUR BROTHERS SAFE IN KURE WITH MIYAMOTOS, AUGUST 10 1945._

_- LEONARDO_

Leo sets his makeshift sign over what used to be their house, hoping it can stay where it belongs long enough for Raph to come back. He feels his brothers' eyes on him as he steadies it with some wood. It should be enough information, and there isn't room for more. He feels awful that this is all he can leave for his brother, and how long will it be before he can even leave to find them? Leo has not thought very hard about this, or about the impending invasion of Japan.

Maybe Usagi won't even let them stay long enough for his message to be relevant. Leo sighs and turns back to his brothers. There are more pressing problems.

They walk slowly and quietly to the nearest train station, and amazingly the line is running—though that is something Leo should have expected, since Usagi got to Hiroshima clean. Usagi is rummaging for fare money when Leo flashes his disaster certificate, and the soldier waves them onto the train without trouble. It's full of refugees, and people like Usagi, returning to Kure for the night. Leo only realizes then that it's getting late, the shadows growing long across the fields.

A young woman, well-dressed, gives Mikey and Dante each a cinnamon heart not long after they board the train. Dante stares at his for awhile, awed by the sight of candy, before Mikey threatens to eat his too if it's not in his mouth soon.

Kure platform is a mess of refugees, relief teams and soldiers, and Leo and Usagi barely manage to herd all of them, and their cart, off of it and towards the direction of Usagi's home. Leo holds tightly to sensei's bones with one arm, and Dante's hand with the other as they navigate the crowd. Mikey's good hand trembles where it clutches to the cart.

People stare in disbelief as they go, and Leo finds himself staring back. He dares them with his eyes to say a word against him or his brothers. Dante sticks his tongue out at one woman whose head turns as they head down a nice street. It's stained red from the candy, but Leo is reminded more of blood.


	7. Chapter 7

_Hey everyone! I'm excited to see some more new readers, and I'm really happy you're enjoying the story. As usual I love a review or comment on the work, keep em coming!_

It's worse because Usagi's neighbourhood is quite good, better than theirs at home. His house has escaped the smaller raids, and Leo doesn't even want to cross the threshold with his filthy, bloodied body. They don't belong here, in this fine neighbourhood and clean house.

Usagi goes in first, touching Leo's shoulder as he slides his door open. They can see him down the hall, speaking to the woman who has met him in the hall—Mariko, his wife. They speak briefly, and Usagi hugs her for a long moment. Leo remembers then that he went to Hiroshima for his brother-in-law ... not four dirty, starving boys, whom he hasn't seen in months.

Eventually they come to the door, and Usagi gestures for them to come in. His wife's eyes are red, but she smiles at them anyway. Leo remembers her as very kind, and he hopes wartime has not hardened her too much.

"My husband tells me you have no place to stay," she says, her voice barely wavering. "He's told me terrible things about Hiroshima. You're welcome here as long as you need it."

Usagi's son is standing in a further doorway, jaw slack at the appearance of Leo and his brothers. Mariko softly shoos him away.

"Why don't you go and put bedrolls in the spare room for our good friends, Jotaro?" she asks him, like they're here for a weekend visit. "You remember playing with Dante, don't you?"

The little boy nods, waving shyly at Dante before darting off again.

Leo is pleased and grateful that Mariko remembers them so well, and a little guilty—he has not thought very hard about their old friends at all since their last visit. The war getting closer, hiding extra ration cards, Raph running away ... there had been too many things keeping his attention before the bomb. It feels like years.

They step inside, Leo helping Donnie out of the cart and into the main part of the house. Usagi asks gently if he may take sensei's bones and put them at the shrine, and momentarily Leo is horrified, balking at the idea of anyone else touching his father. Mikey touches the inside of Leo's elbow and he relents, transferring the bundle to Usagi's waiting arms. He knows they will get there safely, that he can pray to sensei later, but the reaction is still fresh when Mariko motions to the next room.

"I'm going to find you fresh clothes," she says. "Leave the old ones on the porch after your bath."

In the clean, bright streets of Kure they are quite a sight, filthy and smelling of sweat and fire and blood. Mikey's burns in particular are horrifying, compared to the clean, real softness of the people here. They're all dressed in blackened rags, and Leo doesn't even want their feet to dirty the tatami mats as he helps his brothers into the next room. Already he feels spoiled, undeserving of all these resources.

He helps Donnie and Mikey sit, and they sigh in relief at the softness of the mats beneath them. Dante is peeking out into the hallway and Leo pulls him back as Mariko returns, pulling a tub in with her. Leo glances inside and sees soap, oils, a large rice pot. Four white robes for sleeping in, towels and cloths, all neatly folded.

"There's a little heater in the corner," Mariko says, laying these things neatly beside the tub. "The pump is just outside the door here, and there are bedrolls in the adjacent room. If you need extra come and fetch me, and—_Jotaro, _get to bed," she adds sharply, and her son leaves the doorway and dashes back down the hall. "Do you need any help with the bath?" she asks, clearly thinking of their injuries.

Leo does not know what to say, though he shakes his head at her offer of help. This generosity is too much, imperial luxury after the burned husk that is Hiroshima. He only nods, bowing awkwardly before reaching for the supplies.

His brothers react for him, Dante and Michelangelo chorusing _arigatou gozaimasu _and Dante flashing Mariko a charming smile. It flushes her cheeks and she smiles back, touching Leo's shoulder.

"I'll be along with day clothes in the morning," she says. "Our room is down the hall if you need something."

"Thank you," Leo says finally, then again. "Thank you. That'll be fine." Donnie nods and gives her a weak smile. Mariko returns it briefly, before closing the _shoji _screen softly behind her.

Leonardo looks at himself and his filthy, wounded brothers, and thinks of his own nausea and unsteady feet. He finds the heater and starts a little fire in it, setting Dante to work filling pots of water for him to warm. This will be slow going to bathe all four of them, but it might aggravate their various injuries and sicknesses to share the bath water like at home. That's what he tells himself, at least, to feel less guilty for using so much water from someone else's pump.

Donnie is first, so Leo helps him shuck off his clothes and step into the warm water. His brother closes his eyes and Leo sets to work, gently cleaning the worst of his cuts, Donnie's swollen ankle.

He only cries out once, when Leo swipes his thigh with the cloth and doesn't realize that Donnie's side is still full of glass. It takes some time for them to pick out the worst of it and pile it on the porch, before Leo can get the dirt and blood from his brother's hair and finally help him into a towel, which Dante is shaking open in anticipation to be of help.

"Look at that water," Mikey says, grinning widely. It's a sickly grey, full of ash and god-knows-what from their days of hell. Leo has to run his hands under the pump before he can even touch a robe for Donnie to sleep in.

"Bet your water is worse," Donnie replies as Leo smooths out a bedroll. He grins as he says it, the first smile since that bombed morning, but he's still shivering with fever as Leonardo tucks him in. He's asleep in minutes, soothed by the dark quiet of the adjoining room and the soft covers.

Leo dumps out the water and repeats the long process for Mikey, who cries when his burns hit the heat. Dante drops down right next to him as Leo sponges at them with the cloth, leaning his cheek against Mikey's good arm as Leo chants _I'm sorry, I'm sorry _and tries to pull up the grime and leave the skin where it belongs.

It takes longer to get Mikey clean with his break and his wounds, but he looks much more like himself when it's through. He hopes Mariko doesn't mind too much that he's torn one of her towels, to sling up Mikey's arm before dressing him and tucking him in next to Donatello.

"Feels so much better," Mikey whispers in the dark, and Leo hopes he doesn't decide to die here, comfortable at last despite his injuries and unsteadiness. He's reluctant to step back into the bigger room and leave the two of them, when they look so vulnerable where they sleep.

Dante stops Leo as he begins to undress him for the next batch of water, eyes raking Leo's frame. "You don't want to go next?" he asks. "I can wait. I'll help you wash your hair."

Leo smiles and shakes his head. "I'm the big brother," he says, pulling off what's left of Dante's school uniform. "You're all the little brothers. That's just the way it works. The eldest brother has to make sure everyone is taken care of first."

Dante nods in understanding, expression serious, and allows Leo to help him into the tub and help him wash. Leo is shocked to find glass tangled in his brother's hair and sticking in his scalp—but it was too much to ask for him to escape from injury completely. He'll have to cut Dante's hair tomorrow to get out the rest, it's so matted. Dante makes small sounds of pain as his brother works but doesn't protest.

"I want to stay up with you," Dante protests as Leo gets him ready for bed, ushering him toward the smaller room. "I'll help you take your bath!"

"You'll want to sleep as soon as you hit the pillow," Leo promises, and he's right—Dante's eyelids droop almost as soon as he's tucked in, and he curls up close against Donatello. Leonardo sits with him, pushes Dante's bangs off his face until he drops off completely.

Only then does Leo warm up water for himself, lay out clothes and a towel for his own comfort before undressing and sinking into the water. He sighs with relief at the heat. It's the best thing he's ever felt, steaming and all-encompassing like a wet embrace. He doesn't even scrub for awhile, letting himself relax and just bask in the hot water, a tub half-full all to himself. He can't believe his good luck at what Mariko and Usagi have provided. He actually smiles, sinking past his shoulders into the heat, feeling embraced and content and-

_-choking, lungs full of smoke as he runs, the heat of the flames closing them in and making him want to collapse. His brothers are depending on him, but he can't go on, not without sensei, not when sensei is burning to death-_

Leo's eyes snap open, and he has to grip the tub's edges to stop himself from scrambling out and away from the bath. He can't ruin Mariko's mats after all she's done for them, though now he shakes as he reaches for the soap, forcing himself to scrub away his grime. His hands are shaking hard.

He's exhausted by the time he steps out, knowing he hasn't gotten all the glass and splinters himself. There's nothing to be done about it, and Leo spends almost five minutes just shivering in his towel on the tatami, biting his lip hard to keep from crying. Being able to wash himself, his brothers finally safe in the next room, has made him feel everything for the first time. Nothing else depends on Leonardo right now, except to get well. He can finally grieve.

He cries, naked on the mats, cries for sensei and his mother and Raphael as he bites his lip to keep himself from waking the others. It isn't fair, that the others were all so hurt and so young, so it fell to Leo to keep the family together and get ready for Raph's arrival. Raph could have helped him! Sensei could have gone through their home and brought back their possessions, tell Leo if he had hidden any money to keep them from starving to death. His mother could have bathed them all instead, stroked their hair. Leo even cries for Atsuko, Dante's mother, remembering how she'd learned to make their favourite meals and laid their uniforms out every morning. How she'd even tried to favour prickly Raph, to get around his dislike of her in small ways.

It takes him ages to calm back down. He finally shucks off his towel to climb into his robe and then dump out the water, almost getting ready to boil more before he remembers he was last. It's not his parent's fault that they died, he reminds himself. It's not Atsuko's fault she left Dante motherless too. And Raph...

...maybe Leo would have never found Raph in the rubble. Maybe he would have died alone, burned and blind, if he hadn't run away. Leo wipes his eyes with his wrist. He needs Raph, needs him to come home and help him get through this.

He lies down next to Dante and is about to close his eyes, when his youngest brother rolls over to press himself against Leo. Leo blinks in surprise, but reacts, pressing his lips against Dante's forehead anyway.

"You're not asleep?" he whispers.

"I heard you crying," Dante says. "Don't cry, Leo. We're gonna be okay."

That makes him want to start all over again, but he holds it in and pulls Dante close instead. "You're right," he agrees, voice thick. "Go back to sleep."

Dante obeys, but Leonardo lies awake for a long time, listening to the soft breaths of his brothers and wondering if Raph can't sleep either.


End file.
